I enjoyed my time with this game. I think it improved on the first in many ways.
Graphics - The aesthetic matches the first game with gorgeous high-detail pixel art. Animations are a bit exaggerated, but not to the point of absurdity. The artwork and design is extremely creative and from a culture that doesn't get highlighted a lot in gaming. The environments are filled with so much little detail, texture, lighting, it's some of the best art I've seen in a while.
Sound - The music in this game is pretty good, without being overbearing. The sound effects are excellent, I never felt confused by what was going on and they are all high quality.
Gameplay, movement - The platforming in this game is very clean and responsive, and as you get upgrades it becomes more versatile. However, this is where I feel there's some criticism. The game doesn't actually give you too many varied abilities and they are all pretty familiar. I admit I was a little disappointed that we have yet another metroidvania that gives a wall jump, air dash, and double jump.
Gameplay, combat - This was a mixed bag for me. There are 3 primary weapons in the game and of those, I used the 'slow, heavy' weapon the most. This and the balanced sword were great. The 'fast weak' swords however felt too limited to use and I relegated them to their secondary function of zipping around with mirrors when called for. Enemies are varied and generally well-placed, and the bosses all felt very fair. The final boss was quite a challenge. There's a lot of depth to this game I didn't really explore; all the weapons have special modes I rarely use, and you also get spells that I didn't use much either.
Gameplay, exploration - The game has a large and intricate map, and gives you all sorts of goodies to go out and find. I really liked the mixture of secrets to hunt down. I wish the map supported more icons per square, or maybe had a higher resolution so I could add more icons in general. I also wish there was some sort of hint system for what areas still have certain collectibles left. Also, a way to have a minimap would have kept me from switching to map view every 5 seconds. In terms of theming I enjoyed the environments but felt a tad overwhelmed at first due to the many places I could go, and it took me a bit to get my bearings and understand where to go. The game keeps it's very strange and creepy body horror elements from the first game, which is memorable if not always pleasant to look at (the lady that upgrades your flasks and the guy taking care of his baby get special mentions)
Story - The story is very similar to the first game, which is to say that there might be something that makes sense if you dig for it and make some guesses, but on the face of it it seems "everyone is religious, insane, and violent, and you gotta be those things too until you beat enough bosses". I am wondering how much of it might be me missing some cultural references and how much is symbolism, and how much is just "dark souls is confusing, we should also make our stuff confusing".
Writing - There's not a huge amount of dialogue in the game, but the voice acting for it is great. However, the writing is very heavy with religious patterns and vocabulary and tries often to be poetic, and the result is that it's kind of a chore to listen to anyone or read anything.
Sequel - This is a second game and I think it really improved on the key complaint I had with the first one, which was that the metroidvania 'progression' abilities were tied to equipped items, and you couldn't have them all equipped at once. This meant a lot of menuing. This game ditches that in favor of making items hot swappable and useful for both combat and exploration. I think this was an awesome solution. Weirdly, this game doesn't obviously reference any of the events of the first game; that's good to allow new players, and admittedly I couldn't explain the events of the first game if you asked, but at least how and why the main character got out of the corpse pile at the end would have been nice.
DLC - I didn't pay the paid DLC and this led to some disappointment; the developers actually added to the base game map with things only accessible for those who get the DLC, and the game does not make this clear, so you'll find some doors and obstacles that you'd expect to eventually be able to overcome and instead you have to pay up or wonder. I did play the free DLC, and it was excellent, a short but satisfying love letter to Castlevania. It introduces a great 4th weapon that was a blast to use and a new mechanic that helped me in the final boss fight.
Overall if you want one of the best looking, smoothest metroidvania games that doesn't do anything too novel but executes the formula really well, with some creative (and sometimes disturbing) designs and visuals, and especially if you enjoyed the first game, play this one.
